The roots of global health are anchored in historic programs designed to keep colonizers healthy during flares of endemic illness. The underpinning goals included maintaining apace the flow of resources out of the colonies to the colonialists' home country, even, and especially, when these endemic illnesses decimated the colonized, indigenous populations whose health was excluded from colonizers' programs to combat, for example, malaria, yellow fever and cholera across African and Asian colonies.
Today, the decolonization of global health is gaining momentum. Sister Surgeons will explore this topic in a series of podcast episodes.
With Episode 4, we begin unpacking of the decolonization movement with Dr. Sierra Washington, Director of Global Women's Health at SUNY Stonybrook's Renaissance School of Medicine in Long Island, New York. Dr. Washington has a broad platform of global health experience including years lived in Tanzania and Rwanda where she supported academic and non-governmental organizations to build capacity and strengthen systems for women's health. What does global health have in common with white supremacy? What does the movement to decolonize global health have in common with anti-racism and Black Lives Matter? Dr. Washington spells it out...
Here are a few links for Sister Surgeon fans who want to explore further-
Ethics in Global Health trainings and publications include works such as:
https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12910-018-0278-1
https://www.who.int/ethics/publications/global-health-ethics/en/
https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/global-health-ethics-home-and-abroad/2010-03
Harvard University's platform:
https://twitter.com/DecolonizeGh
Uganda US woman starts charity, plays doctor, kills children, no regulation
Uganda - No White Saviors grass roots organization
https://twitter.com/nowhitesaviors
